The dongfeng deception, p.17
The Dongfeng Deception, page 17
The usually implacable Chinese Ambassador was visibly shaken by the strength of Secretary Rankin’s answer and resorted to his instinctive practice of polishing his glasses while framing a measured response.
‘My dear Madame Secretary,’ he replied, sounding foppish by American standards but behaving entirely correctly by Chinese standards of civility, genuinely moved to diffuse the growing rancour in the room.
‘If you will permit me, I should like to speak off the record,’ he continued. ‘China’s military expansion has nothing to do with territorial design or hegemony. The need for a larger presence is forced upon us as we grow, just as America had to assume a global leadership role as it grew. Our only wish is to maintain peace in an uncertain world and to protect our vital economic interests. I have lived in your country and studied at your universities. I have come to admire your people and your culture. I am no more than a messenger, and my fervent wish is that our two nations can live peacefully together and prosper. Our economy has expanded rapidly and, while Europe and America struggle through a period of economic stagnation, we hope for an early recovery, so that trade and economic prosperity can flow to all of our people. But you must see that the world around us is changing. China is now a large economic force in global markets, perhaps larger than the USA, since we now own some 30% of your nation’s foreign debt. If we hadn’t taken up that debt, your economy would be in even more trouble. I implore you to seek a solution to this problem with me, but you must understand that China is no longer a supplicant nation. Like the USA, it has become one which has to carry a heavy leadership burden. I assure you that we do so reluctantly and with peace, not aggression, always at the front of our minds,’ concluded Liu.
At that point, Lt General Nordish offered an unsolicited comment. ‘Now see here, Liu, we are talking missiles, not economics. We want those damned SEMPs scrapped, and that is the beginning and the end of this discussion, wouldn’t you agree, Madame Secretary.’
‘Well, Bill,’ replied Rankin. ‘I wouldn’t have chosen that tone or those words, but I have to agree. Ambassador Liu, please convey my message to your Government, undiluted. It must either accept our request for access for our weapons inspectors or prepare for an international stoush in the UN. On a personal level, I want to express my thanks to you, my regret that it has come to this and to acknowledge that you are only doing your job,’ she concluded.
Ambassador Liu and his entourage stood, bowed to the American officials and left the room. When they had left, Rankin turned to National Security Adviser Nordish.
‘Bill, I respect your right to a view about military issues, but I insist that I take the running on international affairs. We will both have to agree about how to deal with this latest response. What’s your take on it?’
‘Goddamnit, Liz, those Commies…’
‘Just a minute, Bill. Don’t you dare use that word with me, or anyone else. It’s unfair to China and it is inaccurate. These are pragmatists, not Russians, and they have a point about our own position on SEMPs. I need you to get back to me as soon as possible about that. Is it true what Liu said about our latest deployment of a surgical pulse weapon?’
‘Alright, Liz. I’ll look into it and get back to you on that. You can pussyfoot around with your diplomatic language, but I have a more pressing national security responsibility and I’m not gonna let these guys pull the wool over my eyes. Who knows where this thing is headed. Liu just confirmed, by his omission, what we all feared. He didn’t deny the allegation about their Dongfengs and he wouldn’t allow an inspection of them. That means he’s got something to hide and that is all the proof I need. I’ll be damned if I am going to let a jumped up Asian military outfit challenge American authority. I have no option but to prepare orders to bring our Asian pivot forces up to a higher DEFCON status. I need your support with the President on that. It will send a signal that we won’t be bullied.’
‘Alright, Bill, but I’ll only support you on that if you promise to tread carefully. We have invested years in building this relationship. We don’t need another Cold War, especially not with these guys. We need China to help our nation trade its way out of its current economic mess.’
While Bill Nordish left the meeting with a spring in his step, Elizabeth Rankin did so with a heavy heart. She sensed a testing period ahead and a deep sense of moral responsibility for navigating a safe path through this highly sensitive issue. Nordish, however, seemed to revel in the idea that the Chinese had pushed him too far and forced his hand. Rankin could exchange fancy words all day, he thought, but he would put teeth on his rhetoric and give it traction, even if it meant mobilising the most potent military force on the planet.
Within one hour of the adjournment of the meeting, Lt General Bill Nordish had ordered the US Asian-Pivot Command to come up to DEFCON 3. On the other side of the world, grimly reading these new orders on his command bridge aboard the Delaware, Commander Vandenberg felt a cold shiver. Coming up to DEFCON 3 required that he arm warheads and position six of his twelve ICBMs in their launch tubes. It also meant invoking silent running procedures, which required use of passive sonar and reducing hull speed to eleven knots, to minimise hull signature and detectable after-wash sound.
Advice of the US command fleet’s change of battle status was interdicted by the Chinese and travelled at warp speed to General Zhang Ming Wei, who immediately brought his fleet, in the Southern Waters Command, up to an equal battle readiness, which included silent running and use of passive sonar, to avoid detection. In the vastness of the South China Sea, the chances of the two hulls colliding underwater was a million to one, and therefore not really a remote possibility, but tensions on board would, none the less, be high as the respective crews trolled for foreign hulls and asked themselves what circumstances might have caused the escalation of their alert status.
Australian Consulate General, 42 St., New York
Mike Stephens was beginning to panic. The former Commando turned ASIO field agent, whose cover role as Tom Grant’s aide-de-camp was to watch his boss’s back, was beginning to concede the possibility that Grant had met with foul play. He recalled his boss’s fateful words, just prior to his departure for the Hamptons. ‘What could possibly go wrong… on a romantic weekend?’ Those words now came back to haunt Stephens, and he was angry with himself for letting Grant make the trip alone, particularly in light of Lazarus’ report on the Dongfeng affair. He had agreed that his boss would keep the consular car for the entire weekend, then return it to the Consulate General the following Monday morning. But where the hell was he?
Mike looked nervously at the hands of his wristwatch as they closed in on 10.00 a.m.. He had tried his boss’s mobile phone several times. Each time it had rung out and defaulted to Tom’s message bank. He had left several voice messages. Then he had sent several text messages, but there had been no reply. That could mean that the phone was switched off or out of range, he reasoned. Either case was possible but both seemed unlikely. Tom Grant was an early riser, always waking at dawn, going for his ritual morning jog and arriving at the office early, so his late arrival on this important day was totally out of character. After all, it was the day when his boss would urgently contact CIA Director Angiotti to share with him the critical, new ASIO intelligence on the Dongfeng.
As an intelligence agent, rather than a career diplomat, Stephens was not free to share his concerns with his consular colleagues. In doing so, he would blow his cover. Consulates, in commercial centres like New York, did not operate in the same, rarefied atmosphere as embassies in national capitals, whose diplomats were accustomed to international intrigue and the attachment of undercover intelligence operatives to their missions. Embassies were home to career diplomats who managed sensitive international relations and were accustomed to much higher levels of confidentiality. Consulates were different. They operated at a more open, practical level, promoting trade and commerce, providing immigration assistance and renewing passports. Consular staff were therefore less used to colleagues operating under cover. Indeed, with the exception of the Consul General, nobody at the Australian Consulate in New York was aware that the Military Attaché and his aide were, in fact, under-cover intelligence operatives.
Mike Stephens considered sending a communication in cypher to his area desk in Canberra, but it was midnight in Australia and he would expect a protracted delay before they could respond. If Colonel Grant was being held hostage somewhere, time was of the essence. Given the explosive nature of the Dongfeng matter and the importance of ensuring that Lazarus’s report did not fall into the wrong hands, he resolved to take more decisive, local action. He would contact CIA Head, Frank Angiotti, directly and share his concern that something was seriously wrong. He would tell him that Colonel Grant was missing, having failed to return from a weekend visit to the Hamptons, and explain that Grant had, only the day before, received a highly sensitive report on the Dongfeng missile program from ASIO’s security chief, Sir Robert Chandler. He would tell Angiotti that Grant planned to share this new intelligence with Angiotti and that he believed it was possible foreign agents had learned of this and decided to interdict. Tom Grant may have been taken out, to prevent him passing his report to the CIA.
Resolving to contact Angiotti was one thing. Doing so was quite another. Mike Stephens realised that he would have to navigate a complex protocol path to do so. Angiotti could only be contacted via a go-between, set up by the CIA for Tom Grant’s exclusive use when liaising with the US Administration on the Dongfeng affair. Tom Grant, not Mike Stephens, was to initiate communications, using codename Archangel, and would then be directed to a covert CIA operative codenamed Prometheus. Prometheus, for his part, would ensure that Archangel’s messages were passed confidentially to the CIA boss.
This process was an immutable rule within the CIA. No CIA Director was permitted to be directly linked to a field operative, a field action or a covert communication, however innocuous. This protocol was well understood and served as a circuit breaker, protecting the agency’s Director from any association with politically sensitive or legally doubtful practices. That protocol also gave the agency deniability and was an important tool in averting the fundamental risks faced by any public organisation charged with managing clandestine operations.
Despite these complexities, it took ASIO agent Mike Stephens just twenty minutes to be cleared through to Angiotti’s office, such was the priority accorded to the Dongfeng affair. Upon receiving the worrying news, Angiotti agreed to fly Stephens immediately to Langley, Virginia. His office arranged priority transport for Stephens on the agency’s private Lear jet, out of La Guardia, departing thirty minutes later. The Lear jet required just under an hour’s flight time to Langley, where Stephens would be met on arrival by an agency man and spirited off to his meeting with Angiotti. The entire process would take just two hours.
***
Two hours later. CIA Director Frank Angiotti greeted the young ASIO field officer warmly and ushered him into the small conference room adjoining his office. This area was designated a ‘cone of silence’ zone, making it an area which was regularly swept, both physically and electronically, for eavesdropping devices and protected by ‘white noise’ preventing any audio intrusion during a conversation. Once seated in the secure conference room, Angiotti began more grimly.
‘Alright, Mike, start at the beginning and tell me as much as you can.’
‘Thank you, sir’, replied Mike Stephens, conscious of his much lower rank and wishing to appear as deferential as possible. ‘As you know, I work as Colonel Grant’s aide-de-camp…’
‘Cut the crap, Mike,’ replied Angiotti. ‘We know you’ve been operating here as an ASIO field agent for the last two years, and that you were an SAS-trained combative prior to that. No problem. We’ve got our people in your country, too, attached to our missions there, but we’re basically on the same side and share most of our intelligence with your people.
‘That’s what this meeting is all about, so I want you to feel free to lay it on the line, without any artifice or pretence. Just tell it like it is.’
‘Thank you, sir. I will. Last Friday we received a report in cypher from Canberra summarising our separate investigation into the status of the Chinese Dongfeng missiles. The report drew upon intelligence provided by our Asian and European intelligence networks. I decoded the report and loaded it onto a memory stick for Colonel Grant. He took it home to study before deciding what aspects he might share with you.’
‘That was good of him. The report was basically prepared at my behest, following a discussion with my old friend Sir Robert Chandler, your ASIO head. I believe you guys use his internal nickname, Lazarus. We respect that you Aussies have somewhat better networks in Asia, but I don’t expect you to hold anything from us and I am keen to get my hands on Lazarus’s report. I don’t suppose you can tell me where the report is or what new information it contains?’ inquired Angiotti.
‘Well, sir, my office is in a private wing of the Consulate, next to Colonel Grant’s, and I manage the encryption of all messages there. That doesn’t mean that I read every word or understand them, but I do recall the main thrust of it. The message came in late on Friday afternoon. I encrypted the report, captured it in clear text and held it securely at the office. When I drove the Colonel back to his hotel that evening, he had chosen to take the original, coded text on a memory stick, along with his laptop, which has software for decoding it. That would protect its security. He wanted to study it that night, before heading off to the Hamptons, so I’m guessing he has locked the coded text in the wall safe in his room at the Andaz. He should have locked both his laptop and the memory stick in his safe before leaving.’
‘OK, but I’m very uneasy about that report floating about, whether it is coded or not. I’ll need to get someone over to the Andaz fast and see if we can recover it, analyse it and hold it more securely. What can you recall from the clear text version?’
‘Well, there was a lot of bumf about the EMP technology, pointing out that you guys had basically developed it first, which may or may not be an embarrassing issue for you. Hard to lambast another power for simply doing something you have done yourself,’ he added sheepishly. ‘I guess that’s the sort of stuff Colonel Grant would have edited out, so as not to cause offence,’ he added carefully. ‘After all, it is our intel, not yours, and Colonel Grant made the point that we make the decisions about how we share our intel,’ he concluded.
‘Fair point,’ replied Angiotti. ‘But the US is the central figure in this play and, unlike you guys, we carry a huge burden as global custodians of yours and other nation’s freedoms. Our national interest is at least as important as yours and I have the international jurisdiction here. I guess I’m flattered that you and Tom see me as someone you can confide in,’ he added, impressed with the intellect of the junior officer and amused that he had the balls to address a senior US official so directly.
‘Yes, sir. That’s right. But Colonel Grant doesn’t always feel he enjoys the same access to your intel. Anyhow, to continue, there was a curious section in our intel report I will need to share with you. It contained information from our London station about an old, MI6 report on the Dongfeng. It described a field operation, back in 1981, when Charles Ritter, your deceased Deputy Director, was a young field agent attached to your London Embassy. The Brits say he was charged with investigating the theft by the Chinese of a new, Russian ICBM. Turns out this was the Dongfeng. Apparently, Ritter produced a groundbreaking report on the termination of the joint Soviet-Chinese missile programme, including details of the design the Chinese had stolen from the Russians and of how China planned to further develop it.’
‘However, the CIA didn’t share Ritter’s report with the Brits until two years later, when he had completed his posting, since his covert action had amounted to an abuse of diplomatic privilege. Only then did it become clear to the Brits that Ritter had extracted the information under so called code orange conditions - hostile interdiction with deniability - meaning the sort of brutal interrogation used back then, but which would be in breach of conventions nowadays. The victim of Ritter’s interrogation was… wait for it… a Russian diplomat Anatoly Pushkin, then serving as First Secretary at the Soviet Embassy. Here’s where things get interesting. Fast forward thirty-three years and the same Anatoly Pushkin has become head of Russia’s National Security Agency, the FSBR. The presence of all of these factors at the same time and place, in London in 1981, and involving Ritter, Pushkin and the Dongfeng affair – cannot be coincidental. That’s why our analysts think the events surrounding Ritter’s murder are somehow connected – a revenge perhaps. There is no other explanation.’
‘Pushkin’s torture at the hands of Ritter, when he was a junior field agent, provides a clear motive for Ritter’s execution-style slaying. It’s seems likely that Pushkin has never forgotten or forgiven the beating he received from Ritter back then. Maybe Pushkin has crafted a clever way to exact his revenge on Ritter and used the operation to also frame the Chinese for something they didn’t do. After all, they are as nervous about China’s rapid military expansion as we are.’
When Mike Stephens had finished speaking, a profound silence followed. Frank Angiotti looked agape at the young intelligence officer as the terrible implications of his report became apparent.
‘Dear God!’ whispered Angiotti. ‘I hope, for all of our sakes, that you are wrong about this. I had hoped that our administration would find a diplomatic solution to our problems with the Chinese, but what sort of a nuclear nightmare might we unleash if you are right about the Russians being involved in Ritter’s assassination. How will that go down on the Hill… a Russian spy murdering a senior US Intelligence Officer. I am already up against it, trying to diffuse this mess. General Nordish, our hawkish National Security Advisor, has an itchy trigger finger and is looking for any excuse to attack the Chinese if they don’t kowtow to our demands. He is definitely prejudiced against them and their expansion.’
